A good dissertation is a core element of a successful Masters degree. It equips you with key, transferable research skills that will be invaluable to your career whether you decide to take up PhD research or not. A dissertation is not a long essay. It has a certain number of core components that must be evident to varying degrees. Like a good essay, it must demonstrate research skills, independent learning, good organization of complex material, clarity and erudite expression. But a Masters dissertation will be driven primarily by your own original research, research questions you devise and the data you want to analyse. It will be a mark of your initiative, independence and inquisitiveness. You should expect to start thinking about and working on your dissertation immediately on beginning the Programme. Given that that AQM is an eminently quantitative programme aimed at training you in state-of-the-art statistical, econometric and related techniques, your dissertation – while driven by your substantive interests – will have to make use of some of the tools and methods you learned during the programme.